The Reel Review
A mercenary questions his life choices after he is hired to protect a gonzo journalist in a remote South American nation just as its dictatorship government is plunged into a military coup. John Cena and Alison Brie star in this action/comedy.
With a screenplay that feels like a really bad, low rent Artificial Intelligence mashup of nearly every other action/comedy ever made, Freelance is one aggressively bad film, covered with the stink of straight-to-video mediocrity. The only noteworthy element of this terrible movie is how director Pierre Morel (Taken, Peppermint) has managed to make two likable stars so incredibly bland and boring. Even their performances feel phoned-in.
The is one bright spot in this otherwise feeble film – Juan Pablo Raba (Peppermint, Narcos) as the kooky, quirky dictator. He is actually pretty funny but not worth sitting through more than an hour and a half of this mess.
REEL FACTS
• Freelance is the second John Cena film to land a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes in its opening week, after 2010’s Fred: The Movie.
• John Cena’s next film is the 2024 Amazon original comedy Ricky Stanicky.
• Freelance was filmed in Colombia.
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